


never grow up

by moreblack



Series: speak now except it's aftg [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Adoption, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of a Panic Attack, Vague Mentions of Past Abuse, domestic kevjean, kevjean fathers agenda, kevjean husbands agenda, so incredibly mushy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:40:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28467690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreblack/pseuds/moreblack
Summary: oh, darling don't you ever grow up, don't you ever grow up, just stay this littlein which kevin & jean adopt their second child and reminisce.
Relationships: Allison Reynolds/Renee Walker (All For The Game), Alvarez/Laila Dermott, Kevin Day/Jean Moreau, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Series: speak now except it's aftg [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2044177
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	never grow up

It doesn’t feel real. None of it does.

If you told Jean ten, seven-- hell, even five years ago that he would be here, silver winking around his ring finger, tucked against Kevin Day’s side as he rocks their son in his arms, he would have laughed in your face.

Childhood was a constant loop of _you need to escape._ Teenage years were a constant loop of _you need to survive._ And then, when Jean finally made it out and ended up playing for USC, it was a constant loop of _you need to stop thinking about him._

Now Kevin shifts closer, looking unbearably soft as Jean strokes Elian’s tiny cheek. “What are you thinking about?” he asks, as if he can read Jean’s mind.

You, always you, Jean wants to say. He chokes it back for now and settles for a lighter but just as sappy: “How far we have come.” His husband hums in agreement, a small smile gracing his features. It still knocks the breath out of Jean.

“Madeleine’s sound asleep,” he murmurs, absently twining a strand of Jean’s hair around one finger. Their daughter is five and already shooting up past the rest of the kids they know, just like her dads. “I think she got over the jealousy of not being the only Moreau-Day kid anymore.”

Jean chuckles. He’s doing that a lot more recently, laughing without thinking about it. Then he sets his shoulders and goes serious. “Did you ever think we would be here? Be parents?”

“No,” Kevin says, wide-eyed, like the honesty was shocked out of him. It’s impossible to think of a life without the kids now. “I wasn’t even sure I would ever get to kiss you,” he says, and something goes wrong in his expression that makes Jean lean forward and peck his lips then and there. Elian starts crying.

“ _Mon dieu._ He is barely a newborn and he is already worse than Maddie.”

That makes Kevin’s laugh ring clear through the air, a sound that makes Jean’s heart stutter and stop in his chest. “Or maybe he’s tired. I hope that’s it; I doubt I can live through his entire life without kissing you.” There’s a playful smile across Kevin’s face as he says it that makes Jean’s heart kickstart again, too fast to be healthy.

He flushes and reaches for the blanket Alvarez got them. Before he can lay it on Elian, Kevin grips his wrist to say, “We’re going to give him a better life. I promise.”

Ah. Classic Kev. Always saying little things that make Jean forget how to breathe for a moment.

_Kevin Day, what romance did you walk out of?_

Jean smiles softly and says, “I know.”

And he does.  
___

In Jean’s mind, there’s a school corridor, devoid of people but packed with lockers. Every one is a different colour. At the end, there’s a few ones left plain grey, to store things that haven’t arrived yet. He uses the lockers to store his memories. 

Good and bad.

The first one to catch his attention is washed in shades of blue and white, colours that make him think of the harbour in Marseille and the pale walls of his house there. Élodie’s face beams at him from inside; she must be no more than six in this, and that means Jean would be four. His sister wraps small, clammy fingers around his hand as she races towards the Huveaune.

When the locker slams shut, Jean is surprised to feel tears hot on his cheeks.

He misses his sisters. No matter how many calls they make or visits they plan, he always misses them. He wonders if the ache he has from growing up with Moriyamas instead of Moreaus will ever stop.

Kevin is drawing circles on his hip when he comes to. His husband’s hands on his side is a welcome distraction, and Jean relaxes into the embrace. “Élodie and Lucie miss you too. Élodie texted me the other day; she knows you find it hard to talk sometimes, said that maybe we could meet in Saignon soon. Kinda middle ground? She wants to meet Elian, and see Madeleine. It’s been a while.”

Jean huffs out a quiet laugh. “Yeah. It has.”

As he gently rocks Elian, pressing a small kiss to his son’s head, Kevin’s hands move up, skating feather-light across his sides and guiding him back into the corridor of his memories. He finds himself standing in front of one slashed with blacks and reds.

Dread fills him all the way from his head to his fuzzy reindeer socks. 

If he opens his eyes, he thinks he might see his hand shaking, but they’re screwed tightly shut in case a Moriyama is the first thing he sees when he turns the dial. There’s no shouting, though, just the creak of a locker door, and he slowly lets himself look.

Relief sags his shoulders; he remembers this all too well. Memory-Jean is scared and confused, and he’s never felt more lonely in his life.

But then he sees Kevin Day. Kevin, with his green eyes and his dark skin. Kevin, with his dimpled smiles and his gentle reassurances. Kevin, who made everything a little more okay.

“Really? You felt that way about me?” his husband mutters as he presses a line of chaste kisses along Jean’s neck. He sounds almost… _disbelieving,_ and no no no, Jean certainly can’t have that.

One of his hands comes around to rest on Kevin’s arm while the other supports their son. “Of course I did. I still do. You were all I had, Kev. You were the one who showed me it was okay to feel how I did. The one who gave me hope.”

“But I left you.”

“That does not dismiss all the times you stayed.” He’s not sure if it makes sense. It does to him, though, and that’s what matters.

Then again, Kevin’s always had a knack for understanding what Jean means even if he doesn’t quite understand it himself. “Tell me a good memory,” he says, shifting them so the baby slips into his arms instead. Elian stops crying instantly. Somehow, Jean doesn’t take it personally. “A happy one.” 

He thinks, letting himself slip into the corridor, that it’s a lot easier to find the happy lockers when Kevin is cuddled against him and their son is giggling softly on his lap. “ _D’accord, mon chou._ How about…”

This locker is all reds and golds. Trojan colours, Kevin notes back in reality. He’s right, because the door swings open to Jeremy crouching down next to Jean, checking on his leg. To Laila’s wide eyes as she lingers behind nervously. To Alvarez handing him a water bottle and saying: “You’re one of us now, Moreau. Try to tell us next time you get hurt.” Then the moment of hesitation before she adds, “Families are supposed to care for each other.”

“Now that’s what I’m talking about. Remind me to thank Alvarez some time,” Kevin teases, twirling a strand of Jean’s hair between two fingers.

It's silent for a bit after that, just Kevin and Jean enjoying each other's company. They trade kisses and soft murmurs as the sun sets on their cabin in Oregon. It's the biggest house either of them has ever owned, but right now it feels tiny. Like everything is narrowed down to the four of them. Jean and Elian in Kevin’s arms, Madeleine’s soft snores carrying over from the next room. The weak December sun filters through the window and waves in a breathtaking pattern over the wood walls; Jean thinks the real breathtaking thing is the way the rays catch in Kevin’s hair.

It still doesn't feel real, but even if it's a dream, Jean thinks it’s the best dream anyone will ever have.

Eventually Jean goes to take Elian to bed and when he settles back into his husband’s arms, he says, “Tell me one now. One of your memories.”

“All right, okay. This is a good one,” he promises, settling himself down into the sofa and resting his chin on Jean’s shoulder. There's something like awe in his eyes as he traces the sharp lines of his husband’s face. “You remember Paris? The year I graduated?”

How could Jean forget? Paris with Kevin is the brightest locker in the corridor. Late night walks along the Seine, hands intertwined and reflected in the waters. Ordering practically the entire menu in a patisserie near their apartment. The picture they took of Jean feeding Kevin some tart-like delicacy piled with raspberries, and the way Nicky reacted to their Insta post of it: **‘i can’t believe y’all are really out here stealing my title as the gayest exy player.’** Jean had blushed so hard at the comment that he couldn’t meet Kevin’s gaze for almost an hour.

And of course. The night they visited the Eiffel Tower.

“We were on the glass floor,” Kevin says, and pressed this close to him, Jean feels more than he hears the hitch in his husband’s breath. “And I said it was all I had ever wanted. And you asked--”

Oh, Jean could take over this one. “I asked if you meant the tower.” His body shakes with a giddy laugh, and he feels Kevin break into a smile against his neck. “And you said no, no, there was always the one in Vegas. You said, maybe it’s not quite the same, but it wouldn’t be the same anyway if I wasn’t with you.” Even all these years later he remembers how he felt that night. Drunk, almost, off happiness and love and green eyes. 

And, well. Gay. Very gay. 

He wonders if Kevin can hear the blood pounding in his ears. If he does, he doesn’t say anything; his voice is perfectly stable as he continues the story. “And then…” Or maybe Jean was a bit quick to judge on the whole stable thing, because Kevin’s voice starts to crack and he has to pause to get his breath back. “And then you said--” He clears his throat, and Jean groans, knowing he’s going to have to sit through Kevin’s terrible mockery of his accent. _“I do not care if we are in Paris or in Columbia. All I have ever wanted is for you to look at me like you are now.”_

Jean finds himself blinking back a fresh set of tears. Happy tears this time, though. Kevin would only ever make him cry happy tears. “Word for word?”

“Word for word.”

“You know, it is quite ironic of you to constantly call me a romantic when you appear to have mental polaroids of my love confession,” he teases, playfully jabbing Kevin’s ribs and pretending his heart isn’t so full it could burst. “Then we were on Rue de l'Université and we were looking at the lights and you told me that it was not the Eiffel you had wanted. You told me that what you wanted was me.”

Kevin nuzzles Jean’s neck, which he’s half convinced isn’t supposed to happen outside of lovesick teen novels. “Barely managed to get the words out. I don’t think I had even finished saying 'you' before I was getting the shit kissed out of me.”

Okay, that one he can’t come at Jean for. “In my defence I had been wanting to do that as long as I can remember,” he argues, and flips around so he’s on Kevin’s lap, facing him. He takes a deep breath of the perfume Kevin wears everywhere. Something Japanese and designer. Jean can never remember the name, no matter how many times it appears on the shopping list.

“Sap.”

“Word for word,” Jean reminds him fondly. Kevin doesn’t try to argue.

Instead he brushes his fingers, once again, over his husband’s cheekbones. Jean knows it’s his favourite part of him. “And then on the last day you took me to the Musée d'Orsay, and we had to run before the press got there because you set off all the alarms by giving me fucking _tongue_ against a Monet painting.”

Jean shrugs. “We were in France. A French kiss seemed only fitting,” he reasons, leaning in to press a sweet kiss to Kevin’s jaw.

The soft laugh that Kevin makes in response comes out in hot puffs against Jean’s lips, and he presses closer, crowding into Kevin’s warm hands and warmer mouth. “What’s next? What’s the next memory?” Kevin asks, breathless, and Jean is so caught up in him that he forgets for a second how to speak, focusing everything on chasing after Kevin’s mouth.

Eventually he clears his throat and cocks his head, pretending to think about it. “Bangkok,” he says with a crooked smile.

Kevin turns violently red. “Oh my god, shut up. Oh my _god.”_

Jean laughs louder than he thinks he ever has.

“Okay, okay. I do not think I need to remind you of Bangkok. But then it would be… the proposal.” He’s smiling now. He always does when he remembers this.

It happened in Ireland, because of course it did. Kevin had taken Jean to see the Ring of Kerry. He was so caught up in the breathtaking sight of waves hitting the cliffs that he didn’t notice Kevin dropping to one knee until he turned around and found a ring glinting in his then-boyfriend’s hands, knocking the breath out of him for a whole new reason. “Jean Moreau,” Kevin said, taking Jean’s hand and pressing a soft kiss, and why was he a walking romcom character? “I love you, _je t’aime, is tú mo ghrá,_ I love you in every language and every way. I love you for your sharpness and your suits and the way you smile when you know you’re about to win; but I love you just as much for your terrible coffee-making and your bedhead and the way you click pens when you’re nervous. I love everything about you, and I have since long before I thought I’d get to tell you. So…” He had let out a nervous laugh under his breath as his dimples appeared. “Well, I think you can guess what I’m about to say, and I had this whole elaborate way of asking it. It’s just… your eyes look really fucking pretty right now, and shit I am not supposed to swear in the proposal, and oh my god I just swore _twice_ and now I’m rambling but I… I think I would want to see your pretty eyes from the other end of an altar.”

Jean was shocked into silence before he realised Kevin was waiting and blurted, “Yes! Yes, _mon dieu,_ yes a million times.” And then he’d jumped (or more accurately, fell) into Kevin’s arms and, like a goddamn movie, they had kissed on a cliff in the Irish rain.

Kevin looks dazed. “I couldn’t believe you said yes. I mean, like, I knew you’d say yes, obviously, but I was still so… It felt like a dream, I guess. That I was about to marry you. Jean Moreau-Day,” he mutters.

Jean doesn’t know how long they kiss for after that. It’s long enough to completely derail Jean’s thoughts. They don’t talk about the wedding, because Kevin says he doesn’t want to cry right now, which Jean says is valid even though there’s mascara running down his face. He must take a full ten minutes to get out the words: “When we went to pick up Madeleine.”

He steps back into the corridor of memories. 

In this one they’re on the way to the hospital. Jean’s driving, and his knuckles are white on the wheel, and he thinks he might be having a panic attack.

“Jean. Jean, _a rúnsearc,_ listen to me.”

The familiar Irish endearment makes him snap to attention, and then Kevin is telling him to pull over. He doesn’t look pitiful or sympathetic as the car rocks into the hard shoulder. He knows Jean hates that. He knows exactly what Jean hates and exactly what he needs, and Jean finds breathing the tiniest bit easier. “You are going to be an amazing father. If anything, I’m worried Madeleine is going to love you more than me from the moment she meets us,” he laughs self-deprecatingly. Worry makes his eyes seem greener, but he smiles through it, gently carding his fingers through Jean’s hair. “And Lucie is going to be just fine, okay? She agreed to this, being the surrogate was her choice too. She’s your sister, you don’t need to feel bad about asking for stuff.”

How does Kevin always know exactly what he’s thinking?

“Let’s switch seats, okay? If you need a breather, if you need to pull over, just tell me,” Kev reminds him before he gently helps Jean into the passenger seat.

By the time they reach the hospital, Jean is smiling.

Back in the present, Kevin has a strange expression on his face. “I’m not the only one who remembers things word for word, then.” It’s probably supposed to be a taunt, but he sounds so choked up that it loses its heat.

“No. No, you’re not,” he says, and he can’t be bothered to blush at how horrifyingly mushy his voice is.

Kevin clears his throat. “What about when we asked their godparents?”

This memory is a happy one; it spreads through Jean and fills his heart with contentment, making him feel so light he thinks he could float away. It’s Kevin with his ridiculously adorable reading glasses perched on the edge of his nose, leaning against his husband’s side, fingers interlaced as Jeremy blinks tearily at them. “You… you really want me to be her godfather?” he asks, looking so overjoyed when Kevin and Jean nod that his smile is almost infectious. “Of course I will! I-- of course I’ll do it, I would love to.”

And then another one, a week later, filling Jean with the exact same giddy lightness. Him and Kev stand in the oddball Walker-Reynolds penthouse in the Upper East Side, Allison blinking in surprise and Renee with a hand clasped over her mouth. “Oh my god, yes. Me and your daughter are gonna be absolute best friends.” Allison laughs at herself, and Kevin pulls her into a tight hug that’s so uncharacteristic even Jean jolts.

He presses his face against Allison’s shoulder, and she doesn’t seem to care that he’s getting tears on her designer jacket. “Thank you, Alli. For everything. She’s gonna love you.”

When he closes the locker and comes back to reality, Kevin is grinning at him, chin in his hands. “Y’know that was a Chanel jacket? I know Allison’s my best friend, but I didn't think she'd let even me get away with tearing up on her fashion week suit.” He looks so happy, nestled against Jean, that he presses impossibly closer and drops a kiss to the top of Kevin’s head.

This, this casual affection, it’s another thing that doesn’t feel real. A few years ago Jean would have bolted at the thought of it. He knows Kevin would have too. But this connection they have, it’s not like any other, and easy touches have become like second nature to them.  
Baby steps have got them a long way. He cuddles closer and breathes in the Japanese perfume. “One of my favourites. Olympics, the day we won.” It’s not just the medals, though; it would never be just the medals.

When Madeleine was four, one of the locker doors turned bright orange, the letters of _Moreau-Day_ messily arranged in white. It looks just like the Exy jersey she made for herself. He opens the locker and is flooded with a vivid video of Kevin and Jean’s Olympic match, of Madeleine clambering haphazardly over the barriers so she can jump into Jean’s open arms. She yells, “Papa! Daddy! You got the gold!” and there’s tears in her little Day-green eyes, and Kevin comes up behind her, and they’re all laughing. The three musketeers. Madeleine grabs Jean’s face to plant a big kiss to his cheek. By the time he closes the locker, his cheeks are starting to hurt from grinning so wide.

“Oh, oh, when we asked Neil!” Kevin prompts, eyes glinting. Jean bursts into borderline hysterical laughter. 

Asking Neil Josten to be Elian’s godfather was an absolute _mess_. For some reason they decided to do it in front of the Foxes, which ended with a small fire, Andrew picking spaghetti off his armbands, and Nicky crying even though it wasn’t him being asked. Jean never opens that locker. He couldn’t explain what happened that day if he tried.

Both of them are losing it, laughs hot against each other’s skin. “I would make a comment, but I cannot say asking Laila and Alvarez went any smoother,” he grins. The two of them were so shocked that Alvarez ended up falling off a wall in the park and spraining her ankle. He wonders if it’s a sign that Elian is going to be chaos incarnate.

“Earlier today, then.” Kevin’s dimples pop out as he smiles. They’re uneven, and it makes Jean’s stomach do somersaults. “When we brought El home.”

He has to stifle a laugh at the memory of the outrage on Madeleine’s face as they brought her brother back. Elian David Moreau-Day has his dad’s brown skin and big nose, but his eyes are grey like Jean’s and his dark hair flops over his forehead just like his papa. Of course, his eyes are closed in this memory, and his tiny head has barely any hair on it at all. Memory-Kevin presses a light kiss to Elian’s forehead and Jean feels himself fall in love all over again. Later, Jean had smiled down at his son’s adorable face and told him, “Do not ever grow up.” Elian had giggled and curled tiny fingers around Jean’s thumb as he continued, “Sometimes I wish I had not.” But then he had looked at Kevin across the room, intently teaching Madeleine how to grip a racquet, and added: “Most of the time, though, I think it is all worth it. But you are still not allowed to grow up; just stay this little forever.”

Jean’s smile is lazy and content as he leans back against Kevin’s chest, sighing into the feeling of his husband carding his fingers through Jean’s hair. Nothing would be able to make his smile falter. 

_Only good memories from now on._


End file.
